Jason playing in all but 1 task!

Well, what can I say. My kid is a genius! Just kidding….not quite, but he sure is doing good. Still stubborn and argumentative. Bless is little heart. While playing with trailer loading, he just couldn’t get it out of his head that the horse doesn’t HAVE to sniff it before he gets in. And he was determined to get that pony to sniff it. I told him he didn’t have to, but ya know, if the paper says it…..by golly that IS what he is going to do. And his mother, with 38yrs experience with horses, a level 4 Parelli student, instructor and trainer of over 200 horses, was NOT going to tell him otherwise! Of course when Spirit refused to sniff, but kept offering to get in, he conceded with red watery eyes. So tonight, I plan on hiding carrots all around the yard and trailer, and have Jason and Spirit have a big long ‘sniff this” play session. I doubt Spirit will say no, it is just that Jason is still learning the subtleties of the “send”, and with Spirit getting more revved up on circling driving from zones 2-3, I thought it would be better to wait and save it for last in his level one journey, to give him a chance to be more savvy. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. I will just have to give him a chance to find out tonight.




Other wise, everything he has been playing in, is going great. He added yo-yo thru a “gate”, we used the barrels as we just don’t have a gate smaller than 12’, except in the back away from his women. So that will be done well after he can do it well between barrels. We moved the sideways with a fence over to a pole, as I think they both better understand it there. Spirit tried to barrel over him a few times at the fence, and it seemed neither was ‘getting’ the don’t go forward part of the sideways. It definitely was better with the pole. We also added the backwards from the nose and lower the head and they both did great with that. Spirit and Jason are also starting to get the porcupine in the HQ’s. The hardest thing for them both is the back up from a trot. He does ok with me, but the two of them have a hard time doing it straight. So I have been having them work on pushing the front end away while backing. It is getting a teeny bit better each day. But I am not worried about it, as the whole point of the exercise is that he can lead and stop safely, keeping from getting run over, and he can. The only task he is not playing in yet in L1 is driving from zone 2. But he will get there soon enough. All in all, they are doing great, and as a mother, I couldn’t be more proud of him.